Can I get the same RT on FCP as on Premiere Pro?

[Chris Davis]

A clear way of asking might be,

Does PPro just plain have more RT capabilities than FCP (perhaps due to the fact that it makes use of the graphics card) even on fast (CPU) computers, or do PPro and FCP start providing similar RT performance once a fast (CPU) computer is used (due to FCP’s complete reliance on CPU for RT)?

[Tim Kolb]

This is a good question…as I don’t have an 8 core Mac, I can’t prove it one way or the other and I’ve heard testimony from any number of people claiming that one or the other is the clear real-time no-render winner.

Pro Res should run pretty fast on FCP…after all, that’s all it’s designed to do…

In a PPro environment, there is no standard intermediate codec. You can use CineForm, which is a bit faster and somewhat higher quality than Pro Res, but it’s integration into PPro isn’t like Pro Res integration into FCP as it is a third party product. Premiere Pro is designed to use a wide variety of native camera codecs as the edit format.

As far as Open GL…PPro has certain functions and certain effects that will use GPU, but PPro doesn’t lean on a GPU as much as some would allude to… After Effects preview and Photoshop will benefit from GPU cores however…

So…my guess would be that you’d be about even. I know that PPro will load Pro Res because I recently worked with a project that was all Pro Res footage on my PC…so I’m positive it will work in PPro on a Mac…you could try the free demo and see if it works better.

But…my guess would be that even it PPro is more responsive with the particular effect combination you’re using for this project…FCP might be faster with the effects you’re using on the next project. I think it’s possible to pick a particular function and declare one the speed and response winner over the other, and then it’s possible to pick a different function and call the first claim completely false…

I think overall, in many, many respects FCP and PPro are pretty even (which is far more than most FCP users give PPro credit for of course). Testing it in your circumstance is the only way to come up with a real idea of how the two compare.

Keep in mind that in a Mac Laptop, you don’t have a really beefy Open GL display card anyway…and on a laptop any effects on HD footage will cause a render state as the processor and drive speed just aren’t there to create a real-time effects preview. On a large workstation, you might have more muscle, but you would also have to have fast harddrives and a beefy Open GL display card for the particular effects that exploit it (not a typical standard model).

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Chris Davis]

Tim,
Many thanks for your thorough response. This clears up a lot for me.

[Tim Kolb]
“ heard testimony from any number of people claiming that one or the other is the clear real-time no-render winner.
… So…my guess would be that you’d be about even”

OK. This makes sense of why I’m reading mixed opinions regarding RT. Interesting how people can overly promote/defend their preferred editing system.

“..and on a laptop any effects on HD footage will cause a render state as the processor and drive speed just aren’t there to create a real-time effects preview.”

I’m using an external hard drive, but it sounds like the CPU just isn’t there for much RT on HD.

… PPro doesn’t lean on a GPU as much as some would allude to… After Effects preview and Photoshop will benefit from GPU cores however…

Interesting that PPro relies mostly on the GPU. I’ll probably still want a decent card for AE when the time comes.

…You can use CineForm, which is a bit faster and somewhat higher quality than Pro Res

Didn’t know about this. I wish PPro had its own codec but it’s relieving to know there’s another option.

…I think overall, in many, many respects FCP and PPro are pretty even (which is far more than most FCP users give PPro credit for of course).

I’ve posted and read a bit about PPro in the past few months, and I can’t make sense of how FCP came to make up more of the professional video market than PPro.

-Chris

[Tim Kolb]

[Chris Davis] “I’ve posted and read a bit about PPro in the past few months, and I can’t make sense of how FCP came to make up more of the professional video market than PPro.”

You’ve got to wind back the clock to see the origin of the two packages…

Adobe Premiere hit the streets at about the same time the first Avid products did. Avid was developed to take what was largely a deck-control editing process and put low res media files inside a computer for more flexibility in creating an “offline” EDL which would then be “finished” or conformed in an “online” room. So Avid was developed with the broadcast post market in mind.

Premiere could edit Quicktime files (it started on the Macintosh), but needed third party help to capture from an external VTR using RS422 control and analog I/O boards with transcode capabilities, etc. Premiere wasn’t developed around the idea that it needed to communicate with other traditional broadcast equipment…it was designed to take digital assets and create a new digital asset.

In this environment, Avid reigned supreme in “professional” applications as computers in general didn’t have the juice to “online” at a very high quality level without some expensive add-on boards (Avid or Media 100 were two popular choices in those days), so Premiere sort of ended up being a “digital media editor” in the minds of most people, whereas Avid was the pro-level video editor.

Along comes FCP…originally designed by Macromedia before it was purchased by Apple…which was aimed precisely at Avid’s functionality. It was designed to have a bit more “Premiere-like” mouse functionality for those who found that less intimidating to learn than Avid’s keyboard-centric approach (which was hugely popular back when most of us old guys were young and switching from very keyboard-centric deck controller systems like CMX). At that time, very few of us who were editing professionally used anything but a Macintosh…Windows needed to get to Windows 2000 Pro before they really had a viable platform for this sort of thing. Once Apple bought FCP, it seemed that the relationship between Apple and Adobe seemed like it soured a bit (i have no definitive info on this…just a “sense”). As Windows 2000 took hold, Adobe Premiere ended up on PCs far more than Macs (proportional to the computer market itself…far more PCs than Macs overall). Of course the really odd thing that I recall at this point was that Adobe Premiere 6.5 ran on OSX before FCP did…oddly of course, Premiere started life as a Mac app, whereas FCP started as a PC app before Apple bought it.

So as Premiere dropped off the Macintosh for a period, Apple’s ultimate goal was realized, creative types who were really committed to the Mac had limited choices, and Premiere Pro v1 (the version after Premiere 6.5) was PC only. FCP made considerable inroads during that period with Mac users, and of course Apple’s marketing prowess being what it is, they took a piece of software that had a modest start (it didn’t even have audio level display in version 1) and developed it and its market in the professional space.

Premiere Pro is only back on Macintosh because of the Intel processors…easier to port because both platforms are using a common processor base now.

In my opinion, those years of PC only cost Premiere Pro a little professional market share, not to mention that I think the general impression of PPro was still that it’s strong suit was still not communicating with VTRs and doing insert edits, etc.

The interesting postscript to this is that now that the industry’s acquisition is moving away from tapes and VTRs to digital files on computer media…PPro has the upper hand in the number of filetypes you can simply drop on the timeline whereas most competitors including FCP are depending on some sort of transcodes at least some of the time to get media in the machine. So Premiere Pro is still the digital asset editor…but now the market is acquiring digital assets.

Interesting.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Chris Davis]

[Tim Kolb]
“At that time, very few of us who were editing professionally used anything but a Macintosh…Windows needed to get to Windows 2000 Pro before they really had a viable platform for this sort of thing. Once Apple bought FCP, it seemed that the relationship between Apple and Adobe seemed like it soured a bit (i have no definitive info on this…just a “sense”). As Windows 2000 took hold, Adobe Premiere ended up on PCs far more than Macs (proportional to the computer market itself…far more PCs than Macs overall)…

“In my opinion, those years of PC only cost Premiere Pro a little professional market share, not to mention that I think the general impression of PPro was still that it’s strong suit was still not communicating with VTRs and doing insert edits, etc…”

I had been wondering about this and had considered posting the question sometime…

“Premiere could edit Quicktime files (it started on the Macintosh), but needed third party help to capture from an external VTR using RS422 control and analog I/O boards with transcode capabilities, etc. Premiere wasn’t developed around the idea that it needed to communicate with other traditional broadcast equipment…it was designed to take digital assets and create a new digital asset.”

FCP at launch was somehow better in this respect?

I wonder if Mac made things purposely difficult for Adobe regarding Premiere for a few years while Mac built up its market base and tweaked the program. At any rate, it seems that not being available on the Mac really cost Premiere.

Interesting about insert edit example. This may sound silly, but in 2000-2001 when I was using Premiere, I moved all the clips by drawing a square around them and moving them each time I did an insert edit. Looking back, I had assumed that I just did not know what I was doing (it was a “video art” class, not a broadcasting/production, so I wasn’t really trained). But perhaps the program really could not do a ripple edit?

Anyway, many thanks for your time,

Chris